Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
INITIALS ONLY
by Anna Katharine Green
CONTENTS
BOOK I
AS SEEN BY TWO STRANGERS
I POINSETTIAS
II “I KNOW THE MAN”
III THE MAN
IV SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE
V THE RED CLOAK
VI INTEGRITY
VII THE LETTERS
VIII STRANGE DOINGS FOR GEORGE
IX THE INCIDENT OF THE PARTLY LIFTED SHADE
BOOK II
AS SEEN BY DETECTIVE SWEETWATER
X A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
XI ALIKE IN ESSENTIALS
XII Mr. GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE
XIII TIME, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND A VILLAIN’S HEART
XIV A CONCESSION
XV THAT’S THE QUESTION
XVI OPPOSED
XVII IN WHICH A BOOK PLAYS A LEADING PART
XVIII WHAT AM I TO DO NOW?
XIX THE DANGER MOMENT
XX CONFUSION
XXI A CHANGE
XXII O. B. AGAIN
BOOK III
THE HEART OF MAN
XXIII DORIS
XXIV SUSPENSE
XXV THE OVAL HUT
XXVI SWEETWATER RETURNS
XXVII THE IMAGE OF DREAD
XXVIII I HOPE NEVER TO SEE THAT MAN
XXIX DO YOU KNOW MY BROTHER?
XXX CHAOS
XXXI WHAT IS HE MAKING?
XXXII TELL ME, TELL IT ALL
XXXIII ALONE!
XXXIV THE HUT CHANGES ITS NAME
XXXV SILENCE--AND A KNOCK
XXXVI THE MAN WITHIN AND THE MAN WITHOUT
XXXVII HIS GREAT HOUR
XXXVIII NIGHT
XXXIX THE AVENGER
XL DESOLATE
XLI FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
XLII AT SIX
BOOK I. AS SEEN BY TWO STRANGERS
I. POINSETTIAS
“A remarkable man!”
It was not my husband speaking, but some passerby. However, I looked up
at George with a smile, and found him looking down at me with much the
same humour. We had often spoken of the odd phrases one hears in the
street, and how interesting it would be sometimes to hear a little more
of the conversation.
“That’s a case in point,” he laughed, as he guided me through the crowd
of theatre-goers which invariably block this part of Broadway at the
hour of eight. “We shall never know whose eulogy we have just heard. ‘A
remarkable man!’ There are not many of them.”
“No,” was my somewhat indifferent reply. It was a keen winter night and
snow was packed upon the walks in a way to throw into sharp relief the
figures of such pedestrians as happened to be walking alone. “But it
seems to me that, so far as general appearance goes, the one in front
answers your description most admirably.”
I pointed to a man hurrying around the corner just ahead of us.
“Yes, he’s remarkably well built. I noticed him when he came out of the
Clermont.” This was a hotel we had just passed.
“But it’s not only that. It’s his height, his very striking features,
his expression--” I stopped suddenly, gripping George’s arm convulsively
in a surprise he appeared to share. We had turned the corner immediately
behind the man of whom we were speaking and so had him still in full
view.
“What’s he doing?” I asked, in a low whisper. We were only a few feet
behind. “Look! look! don’t you call that curious?”
My husband stared, then uttered a low, “Rather.” The man ahead of us,
presenting in every respect the appearance of a gentleman, had suddenly
stooped to the kerb and was washing his hands in the snow, furtively,
but with a vigour and purpose which could not fail to arouse the
strangest conjectures in any chance onlooker.
“Pilate!” escaped my lips, in a sort of nervous chuckle. But George
shook his head at me.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered, with unusual gravity. “Did you see his
face?” Then as the man rose and hurried away from us down the street, “I
should like to follow him. I do believe--”
But here we became aware of a quick rush and sudden clamour around the
corner we had just left, and turning quickly, saw that something had
occurred on Broadway which was fast causing a tumult.
“What’s the matter?” I cried. “What can have happened? Let’s go see,
George. Perhaps it has something to do with our man.”
My husband, with a final glance down the street at the fast disappearing
figure, yielded to my importunity, and possibly to some new curiosity of
his own.
“I’d like to stop that man first,” said he. “But what excuse have I? He
may be nothing but a crank, with some crack-brained idea in his
head. We’ll soon know; for there’s certainly something wrong there on
Broadway.”
“He came out of the Clermont,” I suggested.
“I know. If the excitement isn’t there, what we’ve just seen is simply a
coincidence.” Then, as we retraced our steps to the corner “Whatever
we hear or see, don’t say anything about this man. It’s after eight,
remember, and we promised Adela that we would be at the house before
nine.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“Remember.”
It was the last word he had time to speak before we found ourselves in
the midst of a crowd of men and women, jostling one another in curiosity
or in the consternation following a quick alarm. All were looking one
way, and, as this was towards the entrance of the Clermont, it was
evident enough to us that the alarm had indeed had its origin in the
very place we had anticipated. I felt my husband’s arm press me closer
to his side as we worked our way towards the entrance, and presently
caught a warning sound from his lips as the oaths and confused cries
everywhere surrounding us were broken here and there by articulate words
and we heard:
“Is it murder?”
“The beautiful Miss Challoner!”
“A millionairess in her own right!”
“Killed, they say.”
“No, no! suddenly dead; that’s all.”
“George, what shall we do?” I managed to cry into my husband’s ear.
“Get out of this. There is no chance of our reaching that door, and I
can’t have you standing round any longer in this icy slush.”
“But--but is it right?” I urged, in an importunate whisper. “Should we
go home while he--”
“Hush! My first duty is to you. We will go make our visit; but
to-morrow--”
“I can’t wait till to-morrow,” I pleaded, wild to satisfy my curiosity
in regard to an event in which I naturally felt a keen personal
interest.
He drew me as near to the edge of the crowd as he could. There were new
murmurs all about us.
“If it’s a case of heart-failure, why send for the police?” asked one.
“It is better to have an officer or two here,” grumbled another.
“Here comes a cop.”
“Well, I’m going to vamoose.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” whispered George, who, for all his bluster
was as curious as myself. “We will try the rear door where there are
fewer persons. Possibly we can make our way in there, and if we can,
Slater will tell us all we want to know.”
Slater was the assistant manager of the Clermont, and one of George’s
oldest friends.
“Then hurry,” said I. “I am being crushed here.”
George did hurry, and in a few minutes we were before the rear entrance
of the great hotel. There was a mob gathered here also, but it was
neither so large nor so rough as the one on Broadway. Yet I doubt if we
should have been able to work our way through it if Slater had not,
at that very instant, shown himself in the doorway, in company with an
officer to whom he was giving some final instructions. George caught
his eye as soon as he was through with the man, and ventured on what I
thought a rather uncalled for plea.
“Let us in, Slater,” he begged. “My wife feels a little faint; she has
been knocked about so by the crowd.”
The manager glanced at my face, and shouted to the people around us to
make room. I felt myself lifted up, and that is all I remember of
this part of our adventure. For, affected more than I realised by
the excitement of the event, I no sooner saw the way cleared for
our entrance than I made good my husband’s words by fainting away in
earnest.
When I came to, it was suddenly and with perfect recognition of my
surroundings. The small reception room to which I had been taken was one
I had often visited, and its familiar features did not hold my attention
for a moment. What I did see and welcome was my husband’s face bending
close over me, and to him I spoke first. My words must have sounded
oddly to those about. “Have they told you anything about it?” I asked.
“Did he--”
A quick pressure on my arm silenced me, and then I noticed that we were
not alone. Two or three ladies stood near, watching me, and one had
evidently been using some restorative, for she held a small vinaigrette
in her hand. To this lady, George made haste to introduce me, and from
her I presently learned the cause of the disturbance in the hotel.
It was of a somewhat different nature from what I expected, and during
the recital, I could not prevent myself from casting furtive and
inquiring glances at George.
Edith, the well-known daughter of Moses Challoner, had fallen suddenly
dead on the floor of the mezzanine. She was not known to have been in
poor health, still less in danger of a fatal attack, and the shock was
consequently great to her friends, several of whom were in the building.
Indeed, it was likely to prove a shock to the whole community, for she
had great claims to general admiration, and her death must be regarded
as a calamity to persons in all stations of life.
I realised this myself, for I had heard much of the young lady’s private
virtues, as well as of her great beauty and distinguished manner. A
heavy loss, indeed, but--
“Was she alone when she fell?” I asked.
“Virtually alone. Some persons sat on the other side of the room,
reading at the big round table. They did not even hear her fall. They
say that the band was playing unusually loud in the musicians’ gallery.”
“Are you feeling quite well, now?”
“Quite myself,” I gratefully replied as I rose slowly from the sofa.
Then, as my kind informer stepped aside, I turned to George with the
proposal we should go now.
He seemed as anxious as myself to leave and together we moved towards
the door, while the hum of excited comment which the intrusion of a
fainting woman had undoubtedly interrupted, recommenced behind us till
the whole room buzzed.
In the hall we encountered Mr. Slater, whom I have before mentioned.
He was trying to maintain order while himself in a state of great
agitation. Seeing us, he could not refrain from whispering a few words
into my husband’s ear.
“The doctor has just gone up--her doctor, I mean. He’s simply
dumbfounded. Says that she was the healthiest woman in New York
yesterday--I think--don’t mention it, that he suspects something quite
different from heart failure.”
“What do you mean?” asked George, following the assistant manager down
the broad flight of steps leading to the office. Then, as I pressed up
close to Mr. Slater’s other side, “She was by herself, wasn’t she, in
the half floor above?”
“Yes, and had been writing a letter. She fell with it still in her
hand.”
“Have they carried her to her room?” I eagerly inquired, glancing
fearfully up at the large semi-circular openings overlooking us from the
place where she had fallen.
“Not yet. Mr. Hammond insists upon waiting for the coroner.” (Mr.
Hammond was the proprietor of the hotel.) “She is lying on one of the
big couches near which she fell. If you like, I can give you a glimpse
of her. She looks beautiful. It’s terrible to think that she is dead.”
I don’t know why we consented. We were under a spell, I think. At all
events, we accepted his offer and followed him up a narrow staircase
open to very few that night. At the top, he turned upon us with a
warning gesture which I hardly think we needed, and led us down a narrow
hall flanked by openings corresponding to those we had noted from below.
At the furthest one he paused and, beckoning us to his side, pointed
across the lobby into the large writing-room which occupied the better
part of the mezzanine floor.
We saw people standing in various attitudes of grief and dismay about a
couch, one end of which only was visible to us at the moment. The doctor
had just joined them, and every head was turned towards him and every
body bent forward in anxious expectation. I remember the face of one
grey haired old man. I shall never forget it. He was probably her
father. Later, I knew him to be so. Her face, even her form, was
entirely hidden from us, but as we watched (I have often thought with
what heartless curiosity) a sudden movement took place in the whole
group--and for one instant a startling picture presented itself to our
gaze. Miss Challoner was stretched out upon the couch. She was dressed
as she came from dinner, in a gown of ivory-tinted satin, relieved at
the breast by a large bouquet of scarlet poinsettias. I mention this
adornment, because it was what first met and drew our eyes and the eyes
of every one about her, though the face, now quite revealed, would seem
to have the greater attraction. But the cause was evident and one not to
be resisted. The doctor was pointing at these poinsettias in horror
and with awful meaning, and though we could not hear his words, we knew
almost instinctively, both from his attitude and the cries which burst
from the lips of those about him, that something more than broken petals
and disordered laces had met his eyes; that blood was there--slowly
oozing drops from the heart--which for some reason had escaped all eyes
till now.
Miss Challoner was dead, not from unsuspected disease, but from the
violent attack of some murderous weapon; As the realisation of this
brought fresh panic and bowed the old father’s head with emotions even
more bitter than those of grief, I turned a questioning look up at
George’s face.
It was fixed with a purpose I had no trouble in understanding.
II. “I KNOW THE MAN”
Yet he made no effort to detain Mr. Slater, when that gentleman, under
this renewed excitement, hastily left us. He was not the man to rush
into anything impulsively, and not even the presence of murder could
change his ways.
“I want to feel sure of myself,” he explained. “Can you bear the strain
of waiting around a little longer, Laura? I mustn’t forget that you
fainted just now.”
“Yes, I can bear it; much better than I could bear going to Adela’s in
my present state of mind. Don’t you think the man we saw had something
to do with this? Don’t you believe--”
“Hush! Let us listen rather than talk. What are they saying over there?
Can you hear?”
“No. And I cannot bear to look. Yet I don’t want to go away. It’s all so
dreadful.”
“It’s devilish. Such a beautiful girl! Laura, I must leave you for a
moment. Do you mind?”
“No, no; yet--”
I did mind; but he was gone before I could take back my word. Alone,
I felt the tragedy much more than when he was with me. Instead of
watching, as I had hitherto done, every movement in the room opposite,
I drew back against the wall and hid my eyes, waiting feverishly for
George’s return.
He came, when he did come, in some haste and with certain marks of
increased agitation.
“Laura,” said he, “Slater says that we may possibly be wanted and
proposes that we stay here all night. I have telephoned Adela and have
made it all right at home. Will you come to your room? This is no place
for you.”
Nothing could have pleased me better; to be near and yet not the direct
observer of proceedings in which we took so secret an interest! I showed
my gratitude by following George immediately. But I could not go without
casting another glance at the tragic scene I was leaving. A stir was
perceptible there, and I was just in time to see its cause. A tall,
angular gentleman was approaching from the direction of the musicians’
gallery, and from the manner of all present, as well as from the
whispered comment of my husband, I recognised in him the special
official for whom all had been waiting.
“Are you going to tell him?” was my question to George as we made our
way down to the lobby.
“That depends. First, I am going to see you settled in a room quite
remote from this business.”
“I shall not like that.”
“I know, my dear, but it is best.”
I could not gainsay this.
Nevertheless, after the first few minutes of relief, I found it very
lonesome upstairs. The pictures which crowded upon me of the various
groups of excited and wildly gesticulating men and women through which
we had passed on our way up, mingled themselves with the solemn horror
of the scene in the writing-room, with its fleeting vision of youth
and beauty lying pulseless in sudden death. I could not escape the one
without feeling the immediate impress of the other, and if by chance
they both yielded for an instant to that earlier scene of a desolate
street, with its solitary lamp shining down on the crouched figure of
a man washing his shaking hands in a drift of freshly fallen snow, they
immediately rushed back with a force and clearness all the greater for
the momentary lapse.
I was still struggling with these fancies when the door opened, and
George came in. There was news in his face as I rushed to meet him.
“Tell me--tell,” I begged.
He tried to smile at my eagerness, but the attempt was ghastly.
“I’ve been listening and looking,” said he, “and this is all I have
learned. Miss Challoner died, not from a stroke or from disease of any
kind, but from a wound reaching the heart. No one saw the attack, or
even the approach or departure of the person inflicting this wound. If
she was killed by a pistol-shot, it was at a distance, and almost over
the heads of the persons sitting at the table we saw there. But the
doctors shake their heads at the word pistol-shot, though they refuse
to explain themselves or to express any opinion till the wound has been
probed. This they are going to do at once, and when that question is
decided, I may feel it my duty to speak and may ask you to support my
story.”
“I will tell what I saw,” said I.
“Very good. That is all that will be required. We are strangers to the
parties concerned, and only speak from a sense of justice. It may be
that our story will make no impression, and that we shall be dismissed
with but few thanks. But that is nothing to us. If the woman has been
murdered, he is the murderer. With such a conviction in my mind, there
can be no doubt as to my duty.”
“We can never make them understand how he looked.”
“No. I don’t expect to.”
“Or his manner as he fled.”
“Nor that either.”
“We can only describe what we saw him do.”
“That’s all.”
“Oh, what an adventure for quiet people like us! George, I don’t believe
he shot her.”
“He must have.”
“But they would have seen--have heard--the people around, I mean.”
“So they say; but I have a theory--but no matter about that now. I’m
going down again to see how things have progressed. I’ll be back for you
later. Only be ready.”
Be ready! I almost laughed,--a hysterical laugh, of course, when I
recalled the injunction. Be ready! This lonely sitting by myself, with
nothing to do but think was a fine preparation for a sudden appearance
before those men--some of them police-officers, no doubt.
But that’s enough about myself; I’m not the heroine of this story. In a
half hour or an hour--I never knew which--George reappeared only to
tell me that no conclusions had as yet been reached; an element of great
mystery involved the whole affair, and the most astute detectives on the
force had been sent for. Her father, who had been her constant companion
all winter, had not the least suggestion to offer in way of its
solution. So far as he knew--and he believed himself to have been in
perfect accord with his daughter--she had injured no one. She had just
lived the even, happy and useful life of a young woman of means,
who sees duties beyond those of her own household and immediate
surroundings. If, in the fulfillment of those duties, she had
encountered any obstacle to content, he did not know it; nor could he
mention a friend of hers--he would even say lovers, since that was what
he meant--who to his knowledge could be accused of harbouring any such
passion of revenge as was manifested in this secret and diabolical
attack. They were all gentlemen and respected her as heartily as they
appeared to admire her. To no living being, man or woman, could he point
as possessing any motive for such a deed. She had been the victim of
some mistake, his lovely and ever kindly disposed daughter, and while
the loss was irreparable he would never make it unendurable by thinking
otherwise.
Such was the father’s way of looking at the matter, and I own that it
made our duty a trifle hard. But George’s mind, when once made up, was
persistent to the point of obstinacy, and while he was yet talking he
led me out of the room and down the hall to the elevator.
“Mr. Slater knows we have something to say, and will manage the
interview before us in the very best manner,” he confided to me now
with an encouraging air. “We are to go to the blue reception room on the
parlour floor.”
I nodded, and nothing more was said till we entered the place mentioned.
Here we came upon several gentlemen, standing about, of a more or
less professional appearance. This was not very agreeable to one of my
retiring disposition, but a look from George brought back my courage,
and I found myself waiting rather anxiously for the questions I expected
to hear put.
Mr. Slater was there according to his promise, and after introducing us,
briefly stated that we had some evidence to give regarding the terrible
occurrence which had just taken place in the house.
George bowed, and the chief spokesman--I am sure he was a police-officer
of some kind--asked him to tell what it was.
George drew himself up--George is not one of your tall men, but he makes
a very good appearance at times. Then he seemed suddenly to collapse.
The sight of their expectation made him feel how flat and childish
his story would sound. I, who had shared his adventure, understood his
embarrassment, but the others were evidently at a loss to do so, for
they glanced askance at each other as he hesitated, and only looked back
when I ventured to say:
“It’s the peculiarity of the occurrence which affects my husband. The
thing we saw may mean nothing.”
“Let us hear what it was and we will judge.”
Then my husband spoke up, and related our little experience. If it did
not create a sensation, it was because these men were well accustomed to
surprises of all kinds.
“Washed his hands--a gentleman--out there in the snow--just after the
alarm was raised here?” repeated one.
“And you saw him come out of this house?” another put in.
“Yes, sir; we noticed him particularly.”
“Can you describe him?”
It was Mr. Slater who put this question; he had less control over
himself, and considerable eagerness could be heard in his voice.
“He was a very fine-looking man; unusually tall and unusually striking
both in his dress and appearance. What I could see of his face was bare
of beard, and very expressive. He walked with the swing of an athlete,
and only looked mean and small when he was stooping and dabbling in the
snow.”
“His clothes. Describe his clothes.” There was an odd sound in Mr.
Slater’s voice.
“He wore a silk hat and there was fur on his overcoat. I think the fur
was black.”
Mr. Slater stepped back, then moved forward again with a determined air.
“I know the man,” said he.
III. THE MAN
“You know the man?”
“I do; or rather, I know a man who answers to this description. He
comes here once in a while. I do not know whether or not he was in the
building to-night, but Clausen can tell you; no one escapes Clausen’s
eye.”
“His name.”
“Brotherson. A very uncommon person in many respects; quite capable
of such an eccentricity, but incapable, I should say, of crime. He’s
a gifted talker and so well read that he can hold one’s attention for
hours. Of his tastes, I can only say that they appear to be mainly
scientific. But he is not averse to society, and is always very well
dressed.”
“A taste for science and for fine clothing do not often go together.”
“This man is an exception to all rules. The one I’m speaking of, I mean.
I don’t say that he’s the fellow seen pottering in the snow.”
“Call up Clausen.”
The manager stepped to the telephone.
Meanwhile, George had advanced to speak to a man who had beckoned to him
from the other side of the room, and with whom in another moment I
saw him step out. Thus deserted, I sank into a chair near one of the
windows. Never had I felt more uncomfortable. To attribute guilt to
a totally unknown person--a person who is little more to you than a
shadowy silhouette against a background of snow--is easy enough and not
very disturbing to the conscience. But to hear that person named; given
positive attributes; lifted from the indefinite into a living, breathing
actuality, with a man’s hopes, purposes and responsibilities, is an
entirely different proposition. This Brotherson might be the most
innocent person alive; and, if so, what had we done? Nothing to
congratulate ourselves upon, certainly. And George was not present to
comfort and encourage me. He was--
Where was he? The man who had carried him off was the youngest in
the group. What had he wanted of George? Those who remained showed no
interest in the matter. They had enough to say among themselves. But I
was interested--naturally so, and, in my uneasiness, glanced restlessly
from the window, the shade of which was up. The outlook was a very
peaceful one. This room faced a side street, and, as my eyes fell upon
the whitened pavements, I received an answer to one, and that the most
anxious, of my queries. This was the street into which we had turned, in
the wake of the handsome stranger they were trying at this very moment
to identify with Brotherson. George had evidently been asked to point
out the exact spot where the man had stopped, for I could see from my
vantage point two figures bending near the kerb, and even pawing at the
snow which lay there. It gave me a slight turn when one of them--I do
not think it was George--began to rub his hands together in much the
way the unknown gentleman had done, and, in my excitement, I probably
uttered some sort of an ejaculation, for I was suddenly conscious of a
silence in the room, and when I turned saw all the men about me looking
my way.
I attempted to smile, but instead, shuddered painfully, as I raised my
hand and pointed down at the street.
“They are imitating the man,” I cried; “my husband and--and the person
he went out with. It looked dreadful to me; that is all.”
One of the gentlemen immediately said some kind words to me, and another
smiled in a very encouraging way. But their attention was soon diverted,
and so was mine by the entrance of a man in semi-uniform, who was
immediately addressed as Clausen.
I knew his face. He was one of the doorkeepers; the oldest employee
about the hotel, and the one best liked. I had often exchanged words
with him myself.
Mr. Slater at once put his question:
“Has Mr. Brotherson passed your door at any time to-night?”
“Mr. Brotherson! I don’t remember, really I don’t,” was the unexpected
reply. “It’s not often I forget. But so many people came rushing in
during those few minutes, and all so excited--”
“Before the excitement, Clausen. A little while before, possibly just
before.”
“Oh, now I recall him! Yes, Mr. Brotherson went out of my door not many
minutes before the cry upstairs. I forgot because I had stepped back
from the door to hand a lady the muff she had dropped, and it was at
that minute he went out. I just got a glimpse of his back as he passed
into the street.”
“But you are sure of that back?”
“I don’t know another like it, when he wears that big coat of his. But
Jim can tell you, sir. He was in the cafe up to that minute, and that’s
where Mr. Brotherson usually goes first.”
“Very well; send up Jim. Tell him I have some orders to give him.”
The old man bowed and went out.
Meanwhile, Mr. Slater had exchanged some words with the two officials,
and now approached me with an expression of extreme consideration. They
were about to excuse me from further participation in this informal
inquiry. This I saw before he spoke. Of course they were right. But I
should greatly have preferred to stay where I was till George came back.
However, I met him for an instant in the hall before I took the
elevator, and later I heard in a round-about way what Jim and some
others about the house had to say of Mr. Brotherson.
He was an habitue of the hotel, to the extent of dining once or twice a
week in the cafe, and smoking, afterwards, in the public lobby. When he
was in the mood for talk, he would draw an ever-enlarging group about
him, but at other times he would be seen sitting quite alone and
morosely indifferent to all who approached him. There was no mystery
about his business. He was an inventor, with one or two valuable patents
already on the market. But this was not his only interest. He was an all
round sort of man, moody but brilliant in many ways--a character which
at once attracted and repelled, odd in that he seemed to set little
store by his good looks, yet was most careful to dress himself in a way
to show them off to advantage. If he had means beyond the ordinary no
one knew it, nor could any man say that he had not. On all personal
matters he was very close-mouthed, though he would talk about other
men’s riches in a way to show that he cherished some very extreme views.
This was all which could be learned about him off-hand, and at so late
an hour. I was greatly interested, of course, and had plenty to think
of till I saw George again and learned the result of the latest
investigations.
Miss Challoner had been shot, not stabbed. No other deduction was
possible from such facts as were now known, though the physicians had
not yet handed in their report, or even intimated what that report would
be. No assailant could have approached or left her, without attracting
the notice of some one, if not all of the persons seated at a table in
the same room. She could only have been reached by a bullet sent from
a point near the head of a small winding staircase connecting the
mezzanine floor with a coat-room adjacent to the front door. This has
already been insisted on, as you will remember, and if you will glance
at the diagram which George hastily scrawled for me, you will see why.
A. B., as well as C. D., are half circular openings into the office
lobby. E. F. are windows giving upon Broadway, and G. the party wall,
necessarily unbroken by window, door or any other opening.
_____________________G.______
| ===desk |
| |
| Where Miss C Fell-x o
| A o
| o
E o
| _____ |
| |_____|table |
| o
| o
| B o
| o
| ________ H ________ |
| *** | |
| ** ** |elevator |
| ** staircase
| ** ** X. |_________|_____C_________D____
| ***
F Musician’s Gallery
|____ ______________ ________________ ______
|
| Dining Room Level With Lobby
It follows then that the only possible means of approach to this room
lies through the archway H., or from the elevator door. But the elevator
made no stop at the mezzanine on or near the time of the attack upon
Miss Challoner; nor did any one leave the table or pass by it in either
direction till after the alarm given by her fall.
But a bullet calls for no approach. A man at X. might raise and fire his
pistol without attracting any attention to himself. The music, which all
acknowledge was at its full climax at this moment, would drown the noise
of the explosion, and the staircase, out of view of all but the victim,
afford the same means of immediate escape, which it must have given
of secret and unseen approach. The coat-room into which it descended
communicated with the lobby very near the main entrance, and if Mr.
Brotherson were the man, his sudden appearance there would thus be
accounted for.
To be sure, this gentleman had not been noticed in the coatroom by the
man then in charge, but if the latter had been engaged at that instant,
as he often was, in hanging up or taking down a coat from the rack, a
person might easily pass by him and disappear into the lobby without
attracting his attention. So many people passed that way from the
dining-room beyond, and so many of these were tall, fine-looking and
well-dressed.
It began to look bad for this man, if indeed he were the one we had seen
under the street-lamp; and, as George and I reviewed the situation, we
felt our position to be serious enough for us severally to set down our
impressions of this man before we lost our first vivid idea. I do not
know what George wrote, for he sealed his words up as soon as he had
finished writing, but this is what I put on paper while my memory was
still fresh and my excitement unabated:
He had the look of a man of powerful intellect and determined will,
who shudders while he triumphs; who outwardly washes his hands of
a deed over which he inwardly gloats. This was when he first rose
from the snow. Afterwards he had a moment of fear; plain, human,
everyday fear. But this was evanescent. Before he had turned to
go, he showed the self-possession of one who feels himself so
secure, or is so well-satisfied with himself, that he is no longer
conscious of other emotions.
“Poor fellow,” I commented aloud, as I folded up these words; “he
reckoned without you, George. By to-morrow he will be in the hands of
the police.”
“Poor fellow?” he repeated. “Better say ‘Poor Miss Challoner!’ They tell
me she was one of those perfect women who reconcile even the pessimist
to humanity and the age we live in. Why any one should want to kill
her is a mystery; but why this man should--There! no one professes to
explain it. They simply go by the facts. To-morrow surely must bring
strange revelations.”
And with this sentence ringing in my mind, I lay down and endeavoured
to sleep. But it was not till very late that rest came. The noise of
passing feet, though muffled beyond their wont, roused me in spite of
myself. These footsteps might be those of some late arrival, or they
might be those of some wary detective intent on business far removed
from the usual routine of life in this great hotel.
I recalled the glimpse I had had of the writing-room in the early
evening, and imagined it as it was with Miss Challoner’s body removed
and the incongruous flitting of strange and busy figures across its
fatal floors, measuring distances and peering into corners, while
hundreds slept above and about them in undisturbed repose.
Then I thought of him, the suspected and possibly guilty one. In
visions over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all the
restlessness of a slowly dying down excitement--the surroundings strange
and unknown to me, the figure not--seeking for quiet; facing the past;
facing the future; knowing, perhaps, for the first time in his life what
it was for crime and remorse to murder sleep. I could not think of him
as lying still--slumbering like the rest of mankind, in the hope and
expectation of a busy morrow. Crime perpetrated looms so large in the
soul, and this man had a soul as big as his body; of that I was assured.
That its instincts were cruel and inherently evil, did not lessen its
capacity for suffering. And he was suffering now; I could not doubt it,
remembering the lovely face and fragrant memory of the noble woman he
had, under some unknown impulse, sent to an unmerited doom.
At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick
realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my recovery
from my fainting fit of hours before. Someone had stopped at our door
before hurrying by down the hall. Who was that someone? I rose on my
elbow, and endeavoured to peer through the dark. Of course, I could see
nothing. But when I woke a second time, there was enough light in the
room, early as it undoubtedly was, for me to detect a letter lying on
the carpet just inside the door.
Instantly I was on my feet. Catching the letter up, I carried it to
the window. Our two names were on it--Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson: the
writing, Mr. Slater’s.
I glanced over at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too early
to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my
name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,--the exclamation I
made on reading it, waking George.
The writing was in Mr. Slater’s hand, and the words were:
“I must request, at the instance of Coroner Heath and such of
the police as listened to your adventure, that you make no
further mention of what you saw in the street under our windows
last night. The doctors find no bullet in the wound. This
clears Mr. Brotherson.”
IV. SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE
When we took our seats at the breakfast-table, it was with the feeling
of being no longer looked upon as connected in any way with this case.
Yet our interest in it was, if anything, increased, and when I saw
George casting furtive glances at a certain table behind me, I leaned
over and asked him the reason, being sure that the people whose faces I
saw reflected in the mirror directly before us had something to do with
the great matter then engrossing us. His answer conveyed the somewhat
exciting information that the four persons seated in my rear were the
same four who had been reading at the round table in the mezzanine at
the time of Miss Challoner’s death.
Instantly they absorbed all my attention, though I dared not give them a
direct look, and continued to observe them only in the glass.
“Is it one family?” I asked.
“Yes, and a very respectable one. Transients, of course, but very well
known in Denver. The lady is not the mother of the boys, but their aunt.
The boys belong to the gentleman, who is a widower.”
“Their word ought to be good.”
George nodded.
“The boys look wide-awake enough if the father does not. As for the
aunt, she is sweetness itself. Do they still insist that Miss Challoner
was the only person in the room with them at this time?”
“They did last night. I don’t know how they will meet this statement of
the doctor’s.”
“George?”
He leaned nearer.
“Have you ever thought that she might have been a suicide? That she
stabbed herself?”
“No, for in that case a weapon would have been found.”
“And are you sure that none was?”
“Positive. Such a fact could not have been kept quiet. If a weapon had
been picked up there would be no mystery, and no necessity for further
police investigation.”
“And the detectives are still here?”
“I just saw one.”
“George?”
Again his head came nearer.
“Have they searched the lobby? I believe she had a weapon.”
“Laura!”
“I know it sounds foolish, but the alternative is so improbable. A
family like that cannot be leagued together in a conspiracy to hide
the truth concerning a matter so serious. To be sure, they may all be
short-sighted, or so little given to observation that they didn’t see
what passed before their eyes. The boys look wide-awake enough, but who
can tell? I would sooner believe that--”
I stopped short so suddenly that George looked startled. My attention
had been caught by something new I saw in the mirror upon which my
attention was fixed. A man was looking in from the corridor behind, at
the four persons we were just discussing. He was watching them intently,
and I thought I knew his face.
“What kind of a looking person was the man who took you outside last
night?” I inquired of George, with my eyes still on this furtive
watcher.
“A fellow to make you laugh. A perfect character, Laura; hideously
homely but agreeable enough. I took quite a fancy to him. Why?”
“I am looking at him now.”
“Very likely. He’s deep in this affair. Just an everyday detective,
but ambitious, I suppose, and quite alive to the importance of being
thorough.”
“He is watching those people. No, he isn’t. How quickly he disappeared!”
“Yes, he’s mercurial in all his movements. Laura, we must get out of
this. There happens to be something else in the world for me to do than
to sit around and follow up murder clews.”
But we began to doubt if others agreed with him, when on passing out we
were stopped in the lobby by this same detective, who had something to
say to George, and drew him quickly aside.
“What does he want?” I asked, as soon as George had returned to my side.
“He wants me to stand ready to obey any summons the police may send me.”
“Then they still suspect Brotherson?”
“They must.”
My head rose a trifle as I glanced up at George.
“Then we are not altogether out of it?” I emphasised, complacently.
He smiled which hardly seemed apropos. Why does George sometimes smile
when I am in my most serious moods.
As we stepped out of the hotel, George gave my arm a quiet pinch which
served to direct my attention to an elderly gentleman who, was just
alighting from a taxicab at the kerb. He moved heavily and with some
appearance of pain, but from the crowd collected on the sidewalk many of
whom nudged each other as he passed, he was evidently a person of some
importance, and as he disappeared within the hotel entrance, I asked
George who this kind-faced, bright-eyed old gentleman could be.
He appeared to know, for he told me at once that he was Detective Gryce;
a man who had grown old in solving just such baffling problems as these.
“He gave up work some time ago, I have been told,” my husband went on;
“but evidently a great case still has its allurement for him. The trail
here must be a very blind one for them to call him in. I wish we had
not left so soon. It would have been quite an experience to see him at
work.”
“I doubt if you would have been given the opportunity. I noticed that we
were slightly de trop towards the last.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that; not on my own account, that is. It might
not have been pleasant for you. However, the office is waiting. Come,
let me put you on the car.”
That night I bided his coming with an impatience I could not control. He
was late, of course, but when he did appear, I almost forgot our usual
greeting in my hurry to ask him if he had seen the evening papers.
“No,” he grumbled, as he hung up his overcoat. “Been pushed about all
day. No time for anything.”
“Then let me tell you--”
But he would have dinner first.
However, a little later we had a comfortable chat. Mr. Gryce had made
a discovery, and the papers were full of it. It was one which gave me a
small triumph over George. The suggestion he had laughed at was not so
entirely foolish as he had been pleased to consider it. But let me tell
the story of that day, without any further reference to myself.
The opinion had become quite general with those best acquainted with the
details of this affair, that the mystery was one of those abnormal
ones for which no solution would ever be found, when the aged detective
showed himself in the building and was taken to the room, where an
Inspector of Police awaited him. Their greeting was cordial, and the
lines on the latter’s face relaxed a little as he met the still bright
eye of the man upon whose instinct and judgment so much reliance had
always been placed.
“This is very good of you,” he began, glancing down at the aged
detective’s bundled up legs, and gently pushing a chair towards him. “I
know that it was a great deal to ask, but we’re at our wits’ end, and
so I telephoned. It’s the most inexplicable--There! you have heard that
phrase before. But clews--there are absolutely none. That is, we have
not been able to find any. Perhaps you can. At least, that is what
we hope. I’ve known you more than once to succeed where others have
failed.”
The elderly man thus addressed, glanced down at his legs, now propped up
on a stool which someone had brought him, and smiled, with the pathos of
the old who sees the interests of a lifetime slipping gradually away.
“I am not what I was. I can no longer get down on my hands and knees to
pick up threads from the nap of a rug, or spy out a spot of blood in the
crimson woof of a carpet.”
“You shall have Sweetwater here to do the active work for you. What we
want of you is the directing mind--the infallible instinct. It’s a case
in a thousand, Gryce. We’ve never had anything just like it. You’ve
never had anything at all like it. It will make you young again.”
The old man’s eyes shot fire and unconsciously one foot slipped to the
floor. Then he bethought himself and painfully lifted it back again.
“What are the points? What’s the difficulty?” he asked. “A woman has
been shot--”
“No, not shot, stabbed. We thought she had been shot, for that was
intelligible and involved no impossibilities. But Drs. Heath and
Webster, under the eye of the Challoners’ own physician, have made an
examination of the wound--an official one, thorough and quite final
so far as they are concerned, and they declare that no bullet is to be
found in the body. As the wound extends no further than the heart, this
settles one great point, at least.”
“Dr. Heath is a reliable man and one of our ablest coroners.”
“Yes. There can be no question as to the truth of his report. You know
the victim? Her name, I mean, and the character she bore?”
“Yes; so much was told me on my way down.”
“A fine girl unspoiled by riches and seeming independence. Happy,
too, to all appearance, or we should be more ready to consider the
possibility of suicide.”
“Suicide by stabbing calls for a weapon. Yet none has been found, I
hear.”
“None.”
“Yet she was killed that way?”
“Undoubtedly, and by a long and very narrow blade, larger than a needle
but not so large as the ordinary stiletto.”
“Stabbed while by herself, or what you may call by herself? She had no
companion near her?”
“None, if we can believe the four members of the Parrish family who were
seated at the other end of the room.”
“And you do believe them?”
“Would a whole family lie--and needlessly? They never knew the
woman--father, maiden aunt and two boys, clear-eyed, jolly young chaps
whom even the horror of this tragedy, perpetrated as it were under their
very nose, cannot make serious for more than a passing moment.”
“It wouldn’t seem so.”
“Yet they swear up and down that nobody crossed the room towards Miss
Challoner.”
“So they tell me.”
“She fell just a few feet from the desk where she had been writing. No
word, no cry, just a collapse and sudden fall. In olden days they would
have said, struck by a bolt from heaven. But it was a bolt which
drew blood; not much blood, I hear, but sufficient to end life almost
instantly. She never looked up or spoke again. What do you make of it,
Gryce?”
“It’s a tough one, and I’m not ready to venture an opinion yet. I should
like to see the desk you speak of, and the spot where she fell.”
A young fellow who had been hovering in the background at once stepped
forward. He was the plain-faced detective who had spoken to George.
“Will you take my arm, sir?”
Mr. Gryce’s whole face brightened. This Sweetwater, as they called him,
was, I have since understood, one of his proteges and more or less of a
favourite.
“Have you had a chance at this thing?” he asked. “Been over the
ground--studied the affair carefully?”
“Yes, sir; they were good enough to allow it.”
“Very well, then, you’re in a position to pioneer me. You’ve seen it all
and won’t be in a hurry.”
“No; I’m at the end of my rope. I haven’t an idea, sir.”
“Well, well, that’s honest at all events.” Then, as he slowly rose with
the other’s careful assistance, “There’s no crime without its clew. The
thing is to recognise that clew when seen. But I’m in no position, to
make promises. Old days don’t return for the asking.”
Nevertheless, he looked ten years younger than when he came in, or so
thought those who knew him.
The mezzanine was guarded from all visitors save such as had official
sanction. Consequently, the two remained quite uninterrupted while they
moved about the place in quiet consultation. Others had preceded them;
had examined the plain little desk and found nothing; had paced off the
distances; had looked with longing and inquiring eyes at the elevator
cage and the open archway leading to the little staircase and the
musicians’ gallery. But this was nothing to the old detective. The
locale was what he wanted, and he got it. Whether he got anything else
it would be impossible to say from his manner as he finally sank into a
chair by one of the openings, and looked down on the lobby below. It was
full of people coming and going on all sorts of business, and presently
he drew back, and, leaning on Sweetwater’s arm, asked him a few
questions.
“Who were the first to rush in here after the Parrishes gave the alarm?”
“One or two of the musicians from the end of the hall. They had just
finished their programme and were preparing to leave the gallery.
Naturally they reached her first.”
“Good! their names?”
“Mark Sowerby and Claus Hennerberg. Honest Germans--men who have played
here for years.”
“And who followed them? Who came next on the scene?”
“Some people from the lobby. They heard the disturbance and rushed up
pell-mell. But not one of these touched her. Later her father came.”
“Who did touch her? Anybody, before the father came in?”
“Yes; Miss Clarke, the middle-aged lady with the Parrishes. She had run
towards Miss Challoner as soon as she heard her fall, and was sitting
there with the dead girl’s head in her lap when the musicians showed
themselves.”
“I suppose she has been carefully questioned?”
“Very, I should say.”
“And she speaks of no weapon?”
“No. Neither she nor any one else at that moment suspected murder or
even a violent death. All thought it a natural one--sudden, but the
result of some secret disease.”
“Father and all?”
“Yes.”
“But the blood? Surely there must have been some show of blood?”
“They say not. No one noticed any. Not till the doctor came--her doctor
who was happily in his office in this very building. He saw the drops,
and uttered the first suggestion of murder.”
“How long after was this? Is there any one who has ventured to make an
estimate of the number of minutes which elapsed from the time she fell,
to the moment when the doctor first raised the cry of murder?”
“Yes. Mr. Slater, the assistant manager, who was in the lobby at the
time, says that ten minutes at least must have elapsed.”
“Ten minutes and no blood! The weapon must still have been there. Some
weapon with a short and inconspicuous handle. I think they said there
were flowers over and around the place where it struck?”
“Yes, great big scarlet ones. Nobody noticed--nobody looked. A panic
like that seems to paralyse people.”
“Ten minutes! I must see every one who approached her during those
ten minutes. Every one, Sweetwater, and I must myself talk with Miss
Clarke.”
“You will like her. You will believe every word she says.”
“No doubt. All the more reason why I must see her. Sweetwater, someone
drew that weapon out. Effects still have their causes, notwithstanding
the new cult. The question is who? We must leave no stone unturned to
find that out.”
“The stones have all been turned over once.”
“By you?”
“Not altogether by me.”
“Then they will bear being turned over again. I want to be witness of
the operation.”
“Where will you see Miss Clarke?”
“Wherever she pleases--only I can’t walk far.”
“I think I know the place. You shall have the use of this elevator. It
has not been running since last night or it would be full of curious
people all the time, hustling to get a glimpse of this place. But
they’ll put a man on for you.”
“Very good; manage it as you will. I’ll wait here till you’re ready.
Explain yourself to the lady. Tell her I’m an old and rheumatic invalid
who has been used to asking his own questions. I’ll not trouble her
much. But there is one point she must make clear to me.”
Sweetwater did not presume to ask what point, but he hoped to be fully
enlightened when the time came.
And he was. Mr. Gryce had undertaken to educate him for this work, and
never missed the opportunity of giving him a lesson. The three met in
a private sitting-room on an upper floor, the detectives entering first
and the lady coming in soon after. As her quiet figure appeared in the
doorway, Sweetwater stole a glance at Mr. Gryce. He was not looking her
way, of course; he never looked directly at anybody; but he formed his
impressions for all that, and Sweetwater was anxious to make sure of
these impressions. There was no doubting them in this instance. Miss
Clarke was not a woman to rouse an unfavourable opinion in any man’s
mind. Of slight, almost frail build, she had that peculiar animation
which goes with a speaking eye and a widely sympathetic nature. Without
any substantial claims to beauty, her expression was so womanly and so
sweet that she was invariably called lovely.
Mr. Gryce was engaged at the moment in shifting his cane from the right
hand to the left, but his manner was never more encouraging or his smile
more benevolent.
“Pardon me,” he apologised, with one of his old-fashioned bows, “I’m
sorry to trouble you after all the distress you must have been under
this morning. But there is something I wish especially to ask you in
regard to the dreadful occurrence in which you played so kind a part.
You were the first to reach the prostrate woman, I believe.”
“Yes. The boys jumped up and ran towards her, but they were frightened
by her looks and left it for me to put my hands under her and try to
lift her up.”
“Did you manage it?”
“I succeeded in getting her head into my lap, nothing more.”
“And sat so?”
“For some little time. That is, it seemed long, though I believe it was
not more than a minute before two men came running from the musicians’
gallery. One thinks so fast at such a time--and feels so much.”
“You knew she was dead, then?”
“I felt her to be so.”
“How felt?”
“I was sure--I never questioned it.”
“You have seen women in a faint?”
“Yes, many times.”
“What made the difference? Why should you believe Miss Challoner dead
simply because she lay still and apparently lifeless?”
“I cannot tell you. Possibly, death tells its own story. I only know how
I felt.”
“Perhaps there was another reason? Perhaps, that, consciously or
unconsciously, you laid your palm upon her heart?”
Miss Clarke started, and her sweet face showed a moment’s perplexity.
“Did I?” she queried, musingly. Then with a sudden access of feeling, “I
may have done so, indeed, I believe I did. My arms were around her; it
would not have been an unnatural action.”
“No; a very natural one, I should say. Cannot you tell me positively
whether you did this or not?”
“Yes, I did. I had forgotten it, but I remember now.” And the glance
she cast him while not meeting his eye showed that she understood the
importance of the admission. “I know,” she said, “what you are going to
ask me now. Did I feel anything there but the flowers and the tulle? No,
Mr. Gryce, I did not. There was no poniard in the wound.”
Mr. Gryce felt around, found a chair and sank into it.
“You are a truthful woman,” said he. “And,” he added more slowly,
“composed enough in character I should judge not to have made any
mistake on this very vital point.”
“I think so, Mr. Gryce. I was in a state of excitement, of course;
but the woman was a stranger to me, and my feelings were not unduly
agitated.”
“Sweetwater, we can let my suggestion go in regard to those ten minutes
I spoke of. The time is narrowed down to one, and in that one, Miss
Clarke was the only person to touch her.”
“The only one,” echoed the lady, catching perhaps the slight rising
sound of query in his voice.
“I will trouble you no further.” So said the old detective,
thoughtfully. “Sweetwater, help me out of this.” His eye was dull and
his manner betrayed exhaustion. But vigour returned to him before he
had well reached the door, and he showed some of his old spirit as he
thanked Miss Clarke and turned to take the elevator.
“But one possibility remains,” he confided to Sweetwater, as they stood
waiting at the elevator door. “Miss Challoner died from a stab. The next
minute she was in this lady’s arms. No weapon protruded from the wound,
nor was any found on or near her in the mezzanine. What follows? She
struck the blow herself, and the strength of purpose which led her to do
this, gave her the additional force to pull the weapon out and fling it
from her. It did not fall upon the floor around her; therefore, it flew
through one of those openings into the lobby, and there it either will
be, or has been found.”
It was this statement, otherwise worded, which gave me my triumph over
George.
V. THE RED CLOAK
“What results? Speak up, Sweetwater.”
“None. Every man, woman and boy connected with the hotel has been
questioned; many of them routed out of their beds for the purpose, but
not one of them picked up anything from the floor of the lobby, or knows
of any one who did.”
“There now remain the guests.”
“And after them--(pardon me, Mr. Gryce) the general public which rushed
in rather promiscuously last night.”
“I know it; it’s a task, but it must be carried through. Put up
bulletins, publish your wants in the papers;--do anything, only gain
your end.”
A bulletin was put up.
Some hours later, Sweetwater re-entered the room, and, approaching Mr.
Gryce with a smile, blurted out:
“The bulletin is a great go. I think--of course, I cannot be sure--that
it’s going to do the business. I’ve watched every one who stopped to
read it. Many showed interest and many, emotion; she seems to have had a
troop of friends. But embarrassment! only one showed that. I thought you
would like to know.”
“Embarrassment? Humph! a man?”
“No, a woman; a lady, sir; one of the transients. I found out in a jiffy
all they could tell me about her.”
“A woman! We didn’t expect that. Where is she? Still in the lobby?”
“No, sir. She took the elevator while I was talking with the clerk.”
“There’s nothing in it. You mistook her expression.”
“I don’t think so. I had noticed her when she first came into the lobby.
She was talking to her daughter who was with her, and looked natural and
happy. But no sooner had she seen and read that bulletin, than the blood
shot up into her face and her manner became furtive and hasty. There was
no mistaking the difference, sir. Almost before I could point her out,
she had seized her daughter by the arm and hurried her towards the
elevator. I wanted to follow her, but you may prefer to make your own
inquiries. Her room is on the seventh floor, number 712, and her name is
Watkins. Mrs. Horace Watkins of Nashville.”
Mr. Gryce nodded thoughtfully, but made no immediate effort to rise.
“Is that all you know about her?” he asked.
“Yes; this is the first time she has stopped at this hotel. She came
yesterday. Took a room indefinitely. Seems all right; but she did blush,
sir. I ever saw its beat in a young girl.”
“Call the desk. Say that I’m to be told if Mrs. Watkins of Nashville
rings up during the next ten minutes. We’ll give her that long to
take some action. If she fails to make any move, I’ll make my own
approaches.”
Sweetwater did as he was bid, then went back to his place in the lobby.
But he returned almost instantly.
“Mrs. Watkins has just telephoned down that she is going to--to leave,
sir.”
“To leave?”
The old man struggled to his feet. “No. 712, do you say? Seven stories,”
he sighed. But as he turned with a hobble, he stopped. “There are
difficulties in the way of this interview,” he remarked. “A blush is
not much to go upon. I’m afraid we shall have to resort to the shadow
business and that is your work, not mine.”
But here the door opened and a boy brought in a line which had been left
at the desk. It related to the very matter then engaging them, and ran
thus:
“I see that information is desired as to whether any person was
seen to stoop to the lobby floor last night at or shortly after
the critical moment of Miss Challoner’s fall in the half story
above. I can give such information. I was in the lobby at the
time, and in the height of the confusion following this alarming
incident, I remember seeing a lady,--one of the new arrivals
(there were several coming in at the time)--stoop quickly down
and pick up something from the floor. I thought nothing of it at
the time, and so paid little attention to her appearance. I can
only recall the suddenness with which she stooped and the colour
of the cloak she wore. It was red, and the whole garment was
voluminous. If you wish further particulars, though in truth, I
have no more to give, you can find me in 356.
“HENRY A. MCELROY.”
“Humph! This should simplify our task,” was Mr. Gryce’s comment, as
he handed the note over to Sweetwater. “You can easily find out if the
lady, now on the point of departure, can be identified with the one
described by Mr. McElroy. If she can, I am ready to meet her anywhere.”
“Here goes then!” cried Sweetwater, and quickly left the room.
When he returned, it was not with his most hopeful air.
“The cloak doesn’t help,” he declared. “No one remembers the cloak. But
the time of Mrs. Watkins’ arrival was all right. She came in directly on
the heels of this catastrophe.”
“She did! Sweetwater, I will see her. Manage it for me at once.”
“The clerk says that it had better be upstairs. She is a very sensitive
woman. There might be a scene, if she were intercepted on her way out.”
“Very well.” But the look which the old detective threw at his bandaged
legs was not without its pathos.
And so it happened that just as Mrs. Watkins was watching the wheeling
out of her trunks, there appeared in the doorway before her, an elderly
gentleman, whose expression, always benevolent, save at moments when
benevolence would be quite out of keeping with the situation, had for
some reason, so marked an effect upon her, that she coloured under
his eye, and, indeed, showed such embarrassment, that all doubt of the
propriety of his intrusion vanished from the old man’s mind, and with
the ease of one only too well accustomed to such scenes, he kindly
remarked:
“Am I speaking to Mrs. Watkins of Nashville?”
“You are,” she faltered, with another rapid change of colour. “I--I am
just leaving. I hope you will excuse me. I--”
“I wish I could,” he smiled, hobbling in and confronting her quietly in
her own room. “But circumstances make it quite imperative that I should
have a few words with you on a topic which need not be disagreeable
to you, and probably will not be. My name is Gryce. This will probably
convey nothing to you, but I am not unknown to the management below,
and my years must certainly give you confidence in the propriety of my
errand. A beautiful and charming young woman died here last night. May I
ask if you knew her?”
“I?” She was trembling violently now, but whether with indignation or
some other more subtle emotion, it would be difficult to say. “No, I’m
from the South. I never saw the young lady. Why do you ask? I do not
recognise your right. I--I--”
Certainly her emotion must be that of simple indignation. Mr. Gryce made
one of his low bows, and propping himself against the table he stood
before, remarked civilly:--
“I had rather not force my rights. The matter is so very ordinary. I did
not suppose you knew Miss Challoner, but one must begin somehow, and as
you came in at the very moment when the alarm was raised in the lobby,
I thought perhaps you could tell me something which would aid me in my
effort to elicit the real facts of the case. You were crossing the lobby
at the time--”
“Yes.” She raised her head. “So were a dozen others--”
“Madam,”--the interruption was made in his kindliest tones, but in a way
which nevertheless suggested authority. “Something was picked up from
the floor at that moment. If the dozen you mention were witnesses
to this act we do not know it. But we do know that it did not pass
unobserved by you. Am I not correct? Didn’t you see a certain person--I
will mention no names--stoop and pick up something from the lobby
floor?”
“No.” The word came out with startling violence. “I was conscious of
nothing but the confusion.” She was facing him with determination and
her eyes were fixed boldly on his face. But her lips quivered, and her
cheeks were white, too white now for simple indignation.
“Then I have made a big mistake,” apologised the ever-courteous
detective. “Will you pardon me? It would have settled a very serious
question if it could be found that the object thus picked up was the
weapon which killed Miss Challoner. That is my excuse for the trouble I
have given you.”
He was not looking at her; he was looking at her hand which rested
on the table before which he himself stood. Did the fingers tighten a
little and dig into the palm they concealed? He thought so, and was very
slow in turning limpingly about towards the door. Meanwhile, would she
speak? No. The silence was so marked, he felt it an excuse for stealing
another glance in her direction. She was not looking his way but at a
door in the partition wall on her right; and the look was one very akin
to anxious fear. The next moment he understood it. The door burst open,
and a young girl bounded into the room, with the merry cry:
“All ready, mother. I’m glad we are going to the Clarendon. I hate
hotels where people die almost before your eyes.”
What the mother said at this outburst is immaterial. What the detective
did is not. Keeping on his way, he reached the door, but not to open
it wider; rather to close it softly but with unmistakable decision. The
cloak which enveloped the girl was red, and full enough to be called
voluminous.
“Who is this?” demanded the girl, her indignant glances flashing from
one to the other.
“I don’t know,” faltered the mother in very evident distress. “He says
he has a right to ask us questions and he has been asking questions
about--about--”
“Not about me,” laughed the girl, with a toss of her head Mr. Gryce
would have corrected in one of his grandchildren. “He can have nothing
to say about me.” And she began to move about the room in an aimless,
half-insolent way.
Mr. Gryce stared hard at the few remaining belongings of the two women,
lying in a heap on the table, and half musingly, half deprecatingly,
remarked:
“The person who stooped wore a long red cloak. Probably you preceded
your daughter, Mrs. Watkins.”
The lady thus brought to the point made a quick gesture towards the
girl who suddenly stood still, and, with a rising colour in her cheeks,
answered, with some show of resolution on her own part:
“You say your name is Gryce and that you have a right to address me thus
pointedly on a subject which you evidently regard as serious. That is
not exact enough for me. Who are you, sir? What is your business?”
“I think you have guessed it. I am a detective from Headquarters. What
I want of you I have already stated. Perhaps this young lady can tell me
what you cannot. I shall be pleased if this is so.”
“Caroline”--Then the mother broke down. “Show the gentleman what you
picked up from the lobby floor last night.”
The girl laughed again, loudly and with evident bravado, before she
threw the cloak back and showed what she had evidently been holding in
her hand from the first, a sharp-pointed, gold-handled paper-cutter.
“It was lying there and I picked it up. I don’t see any harm in that.”
“You probably meant none. You couldn’t have known the part it had just
played in this tragic drama,” said the old detective looking carefully
at the cutter which he had taken in his hand, but not so carefully that
he failed to note that the look of distress was not lifted from the
mother’s face either by her daughter’s words or manner.
“You have washed this?” he asked.
“No. Why should I wash it? It was clean enough. I was just going down to
give it in at the desk. I wasn’t going to carry it away.” And she turned
aside to the window and began to hum, as though done with the whole
matter.
The old detective rubbed his chin, glanced again at the paper-cutter,
then at the girl in the window, and lastly at the mother, who had lifted
her head again and was facing him bravely.
“It is very important,” he observed to the latter, “that your daughter
should be correct in her statement as to the condition of this article
when she picked it up. Are you sure she did not wash it?”
“I don’t think she did. But I’m sure she will tell you the truth about
that. Caroline, this is a police matter. Any mistake about it may
involve us in a world of trouble and keep you from getting back home in
time for your coming-out party. Did you--did you wash this cutter when
you got upstairs, or--or--” she added, with a propitiatory glance at
Mr. Gryce--“wipe it off at any time between then and now? Don’t answer
hastily. Be sure. No one can blame you for that act. Any girl, as
thoughtless as you, might do that.”
“Mother, how can I tell what I did?” flashed out the girl, wheeling
round on her heel till she faced them both. “I don’t remember doing a
thing to it. I just brought it up. A thing found like that belongs to
the finder. You needn’t hold it out towards me like that. I don’t want
it now; I’m sick of it. Such a lot of talk about a paltry thing which
couldn’t have cost ten dollars.” And she wheeled back.
“It isn’t the value.” Mr. Gryce could be very patient. “It’s the
fact that we believe it to have been answerable for Miss Challoner’s
death--that is, if there was any blood on it when you picked it up.”
“Blood!” The girl was facing them again, astonishment struggling with
disgust on her plain but mobile features. “Blood! is that what you mean.
No wonder I hate it. Take it away,” she cried.
“Oh, mother, I’ll never pick up anything again which doesn’t belong to
me! Blood!” she repeated in horror, flinging herself into her mother’s
arms.
Mr. Gryce thought he understood the situation. Here was a little
kleptomaniac whose weakness the mother was struggling to hide. Light
was pouring in. He felt his body’s weight less on that miserable foot of
his.
“Does that frighten you? Are you so affected by the thought of blood?”
“Don’t ask me. And I put the thing under my pillow! I thought it was
so--so pretty.”
“Mrs. Watkins,” Mr. Gryce from that moment ignored the daughter, “did
you see it there?”
“Yes; but I didn’t know where it came from. I had not seen my daughter
stoop. I didn’t know where she got it till I read that bulletin.”
“Never mind that. The question agitating me is whether any stain was
left under that pillow. We want to be sure of the connection between
this possible weapon and the death by stabbing which we all deplore--if
there is a connection.”
“I didn’t see any stain, but you can look for yourself. The bed has been
made up, but there was no change of linen. We expected to remain here; I
see no good to be gained by hiding any of the facts now.”
“None whatever, Madam.”
“Come, then. Caroline, sit down and stop crying. Mr. Gryce believes that
your only fault was in not taking this object at once to the desk.”
“Yes, that’s all,” acquiesced the detective after a short study of the
shaking figure and distorted features of the girl. “You had no idea, I’m
sure, where this weapon came from, or for what it had been used. That’s
evident.”
Her shudder, as she seated herself, was very convincing. She was too
young to simulate so successfully emotions of this character.
“I’m glad of that,” she responded, half fretfully, half gratefully, as
Mr. Gryce followed her mother into the adjoining room. “I’ve had a bad
enough time of it without being blamed for what I didn’t know and didn’t
do.”
Mr. Gryce laid little stress upon these words, but much upon the lack of
curiosity she showed in the minute and careful examination he now made
of her room. There was no stain on the pillow-cover and none on the
bureau-spread where she might very naturally have laid the cutter down
on first coming into her room. The blade was so polished that it must
have been rubbed off somewhere, either purposely or by accident. Where
then, since not here? He asked to see her gloves--the ones she had worn
the previous night.
“They are the same she is wearing now,” the anxious mother assured him.
“Wait, and I will get them for you.”
“No need. Let her hold out her hands in token of amity. I shall soon
see.”
They returned to where the girl still sat, wrapped in her cloak, sobbing
still, but not so violently.
“Caroline, you may take off your things,” said the mother, drawing the
pins from her own hat. “We shall not go to-day.”
The child shot her mother one disappointed look, then proceeded to
follow suit. When her hat was off, she began to take off her gloves.
As soon as they were on the table, the mother pushed them over to Mr.
Gryce. As he looked at them, the girl lifted off her cloak.
“Will--will he tell?” she whispered behind its ample folds into her
mother’s ear.
The answer came quickly, but not in the mother’s tones. Mr. Gryce’s ears
had lost none of their ancient acuteness.
“I do not see that I should gain much by doing so. The one discovery
which would link this find of yours indissolubly with Miss Challoner’s
death, I have failed to make. If I am equally unsuccessful below--if I
can establish no closer connection there than here between this cutter
and the weapon which killed Miss Challoner, I shall have no cause
to mention the matter. It will be too extraneous to the case. Do you
remember the exact spot where you stooped, Miss Watkins?”
“No, no. Somewhere near those big chairs; I didn’t have to step out of
my way; I really didn’t.”
Mr. Gryce’s answering smile was a study. It seemed to convey a two-fold
message, one for the mother and one for the child, and both were
comforting. But he went away, disappointed. The clew which promised so
much was, to all appearance, a false one.
He could soon tell.
VI. INTEGRITY
Mr. Gryce’s fears were only too well founded. Though Mr. McElroy was
kind enough to point out the exact spot where he saw Miss Watkins stoop,
no trace of blood was found upon the rug which had lain there, nor had
anything of the kind been washed up by the very careful man who scrubbed
the lobby floor in the early morning. This was disappointing, as its
presence would have settled the whole question. When, these efforts all
exhausted, the two detectives faced each other again in the small
room given up to their use, Mr. Gryce showed his discouragement. To be
certain of a fact you cannot prove has not the same alluring quality
for the old that it has for the young. Sweetwater watched him in some
concern, then with the persistence which was one of his strong points,
ventured finally to remark:
“I have but one idea left on the subject.”
“And what is that?” Old as he was, Mr. Gryce was alert in a moment.
“The girl wore a red cloak. If I mistake not, the lining was also red. A
spot on it might not show to the casual observer. Yet it would mean much
to us.”
“Sweetwater!”
A faint blush rose to the old man’s cheek.
“Shall I request the privilege of looking that garment over?”
“Yes.”
The young fellow ducked and left the room. When he returned, it was with
a downcast air.
“Nothing doing,” said he.
And then there was silence.
“We only need to find out now that this cutter was not even Miss
Challoner’s property,” remarked Mr. Gryce, at last, with a gesture
towards the object named, lying openly on the table before him.
“That should be easy. Shall I take it to their rooms and show it to her
maid?”
“If you can do so without disturbing the old gentleman.”
But here they were themselves disturbed. A knock at the door was
followed by the immediate entrance of the very person just mentioned.
Mr. Challoner had come in search of the inspector, and showed some
surprise to find his place occupied by an unknown old man.
But Mr. Gryce, who discerned tidings in the bereaved father’s face, was
all alacrity in an instant. Greeting his visitor with a smile which few
could see without trusting the man, he explained the inspector’s absence
and introduced himself in his own capacity.
Mr. Challoner had heard of him. Nevertheless, he did not seem inclined
to speak.
Mr. Gryce motioned Sweetwater from the room. With a woeful look the
young detective withdrew, his last glance cast at the cutter still lying
in full view on the table.
Mr. Gryce, not unmindful himself of this object, took it up, then laid
it down again, with an air of seeming abstraction.
The father’s attention was caught.
“What is that?” he cried, advancing a step and bestowing more than an
ordinary glance at the object thus brought casually, as it were, to his
notice. “I surely recognise this cutter. Does it belong here or--”
Mr. Gryce, observing the other’s emotion, motioned him to a chair.
As his visitor sank into it, he remarked, with all the consideration
exacted by the situation:
“It is unknown property, Mr. Challoner. But we have some reason to think
it belonged to your daughter. Are we correct in this surmise?”
“I have seen it, or one like it, often in her hand.” Here his eyes
suddenly dilated and the hand stretched forth to grasp it quickly drew
back. “Where--where was it found?” he hoarsely demanded. “O God! am I to
be crushed to the very earth by sorrow!”
Mr. Gryce hastened to give him such relief as was consistent with the
truth.
“It was picked up--last night--from the lobby floor. There is seemingly
nothing to connect it with her death. Yet--”
The pause was eloquent. Mr. Challoner gave the detective an agonised
look and turned white to the lips. Then gradually, as the silence
continued, his head fell forward, and he muttered almost unintelligibly:
“I honestly believe her the victim of some heartless stranger. I do
now; but--but I cannot mislead the police. At any cost I must retract a
statement I made under false impressions and with no desire to deceive.
I said that I knew all of the gentlemen who admired her and aspired to
her hand, and that they were all reputable men and above committing a
crime of this or any other kind. But it seems that I did not know her
secret heart as thoroughly as I had supposed. Among her effects I
have just come upon a batch of letters--love letters I am forced to
acknowledge--signed by initials totally strange to me. The letters are
manly in tone--most of them--but one--”
“What about the one?”
“Shows that the writer was displeased. It may mean nothing, but I could
not let the matter go without setting myself right with the authorities.
If it might be allowed to rest here--if those letters can remain sacred,
it would save me the additional pang of seeing her inmost concerns--the
secret and holiest recesses of a woman’s heart, laid open to the public.
For, from the tenor of most of these letters, she--she was not averse to
the writer.”
Mr. Gryce moved a little restlessly in his chair and stared hard at the
cutter so conveniently placed under his eye. Then his manner softened
and he remarked:
“We will do what we can. But you must understand that the matter is not
a simple one. That, in fact, it contains mysteries which demand police
investigation. We do not dare to trifle with any of the facts. The
inspector, and, if not he, the coroner, will have to be told about these
letters and will probably ask to see them.”
“They are the letters of a gentleman.”
“With the one exception.”
“Yes, that is understood.” Then in a sudden heat and with an almost
sublime trust in his daughter notwithstanding the duplicity he had just
discovered:
“Nothing--not the story told by these letters, or the sight of that
sturdy paper-cutter with its long and very slender blade, will make me
believe that she willingly took her own life. You do not know, cannot
know, the rare delicacy of her nature. She was a lady through and
through. If she had meditated death--if the breach suggested by the one
letter I have mentioned, should have so preyed upon her spirits as to
lead her to break her old father’s heart and outrage the feelings of all
who knew her, she could not, being the woman she was, choose a public
place for such an act--an hotel writing-room--in face of a lobby full
of hurrying men. It was out of nature. Every one who knows her will tell
you so. The deed was an accident--incredible--but still an accident.”
Mr. Gryce had respect for this outburst. Making no attempt to answer it,
he suggested, with some hesitation, that Miss Challoner had been seen
writing a letter previous to taking those fatal steps from the desk
which ended so tragically. Was this letter to one of her lady friends,
as reported, and was it as far from suggesting the awful tragedy which
followed, as he had been told?
“It was a cheerful letter. Such a one as she often wrote to her little
protegees here and there. I judge that this was written to some girl
like that, for the person addressed was not known to her maid, any
more than she was to me. It expressed an affectionate interest, and it
breathed encouragement--encouragement! and she meditating her own death
at the moment! Impossible! That letter should exonerate her if nothing
else does.”
Mr. Gryce recalled the incongruities, the inconsistencies and even the
surprising contradictions which had often marked the conduct of men and
women, in his lengthy experience with the strange, the sudden, and
the tragic things of life, and slightly shook his head. He pitied Mr.
Challoner, and admired even more his courage in face of the appalling
grief which had overwhelmed him, but he dared not encourage a false
hope. The girl had killed herself and with this weapon. They might not
be able to prove it absolutely, but it was nevertheless true, and this
broken old man would some day be obliged to acknowledge it. But the
detective said nothing of this, and was very patient with the further
arguments the other advanced to prove his point and the lofty character
of the girl to whom, misled by appearance, the police seemed inclined to
attribute the awful sin of self-destruction.
But when, this topic exhausted, Mr. Challoner rose to leave the room,
Mr. Gryce showed where his own thoughts still centred, by asking him
the date of the correspondence discovered between his daughter and her
unknown admirer.
“Some of the letters were dated last summer, some this fall. The one
you are most anxious to hear about only a month back,” he added, with
unconquerable devotion to what he considered his duty.
Mr. Gryce would like to have carried his inquiries further, but
desisted. His heart was full of compassion for this childless old man,
doomed to have his choicest memories disturbed by cruel doubts which
possibly would never be removed to his own complete satisfaction.
But when he was gone, and Sweetwater had returned, Mr. Gryce made it his
first duty to communicate to his superiors the hitherto unsuspected fact
of a secret romance in Miss Challoner’s seemingly calm and well-guarded
life. She had loved and been loved by one of whom her family knew
nothing. And the two had quarrelled, as certain letters lately found
could be made to show.
VII. THE LETTERS
Before a table strewn with papers, in the room we have already mentioned
as given over to the use of the police, sat Dr. Heath in a mood too
thoughtful to notice the entrance of Mr. Gryce and Sweetwater from the
dining-room where they had been having dinner.
However as the former’s tread was somewhat lumbering, the coroner’s
attention was caught before they had quite crossed the room, and
Sweetwater, with his quick eye, noted how his arm and hand immediately
fell so as to cover up a portion of the papers lying nearest to him.
“Well, Gryce, this is a dark case,” he observed, as at his bidding the
two detectives took their seats.
Mr. Gryce nodded; so did Sweetwater.
“The darkest that has ever come to my knowledge,” pursued the coroner.
Mr. Gryce again nodded; but not so, Sweetwater. For some reason this
simple expression of opinion seemed to have given him a mental start.
“She was not shot. She was not struck by any other hand; yet she lies
dead from a mortal wound in the breast. Though there is no tangible
proof of her having inflicted this wound upon herself, the jury will
have no alternative, I fear, than to pronounce the case one of suicide.”
“I’m sorry that I’ve been able to do so little,” remarked Mr. Gryce.
The coroner darted him a quick look.
“You are not satisfied? You have some different idea?” he asked.
The detective frowned at his hands crossed over the top of his cane,
then shaking his head, replied:
“The verdict you mention is the only natural one, of course. I see that
you have been talking with Miss Challoner’s former maid?”
“Yes, and she has settled an important point for us. There was a
possibility, of course, that the paper-cutter which you brought to my
notice had never gone with her into the mezzanine. That she, or some
other person, had dropped it in passing through the lobby. But this girl
assures me that her mistress did not enter the lobby that night. That
she accompanied her down in the elevator, and saw her step off at
the mezzanine. She can also swear that the cutter was in a book she
carried--the book we found lying on the desk. The girl remembers
distinctly seeing its peculiarly chased handle projecting from its
pages. Could anything be more satisfactory if--I was going to say,
if the young lady had been of the impulsive type and the provocation
greater. But Miss Challoner’s nature was calm, and were it not for these
letters--” here his arm shifted a little--“I should not be so sure of
my jury’s future verdict. Love--” he went on, after a moment of silent
consideration of a letter he had chosen from those before him, “disturbs
the most equable natures. When it enters as a factor, we can expect
anything--as you know. And Miss Challoner evidently was much attached
to her correspondent, and naturally felt the reproach conveyed in these
lines.”
And Dr. Heath read:
“Dear Miss Challoner:
“Only a man of small spirit could endure what I endured from you
the other day. Love such as mine would be respectable in a
clod-hopper, and I think that even you will acknowledge that I
stand somewhat higher than that. Though I was silent under your
disapprobation, you shall yet have your answer. It will not lack
point because of its necessary delay.”
“A threat!”
The words sprang from Sweetwater, and were evidently involuntary. Dr.
Heath paid no notice, but Mr. Gryce, in shifting his hands on his cane
top, gave them a sidelong look which was not without a hint of fresh
interest in a case concerning which he had believed himself to have said
his last word.
“It is the only letter of them all which conveys anything like a
reproach,” proceeded the coroner. “The rest are ardent enough and, I
must acknowledge that, so far as I have allowed myself to look into
them, sufficiently respectful. Her surprise must consequently have been
great at receiving these lines, and her resentment equally so. If the
two met afterwards--But I have not shown you the signature. To the poor
father it conveyed nothing--some facts have been kept from him--but to
us--” here he whirled the letter about so that Sweetwater, at least,
could see the name, “it conveys a hope that we may yet understand Miss
Challoner.”
“Brotherson!” exclaimed the young detective in loud surprise.
“Brotherson! The man who--”
“The man who left this building just before or simultaneously with the
alarm caused by Miss Challoner’s fall. It clears away some of the clouds
befogging us. She probably caught sight of him in the lobby, and in
the passion of the moment forgot her usual instincts and drove the
sharp-pointed weapon into her heart.”
“Brotherson!” The word came softly now, and with a thoughtful
intonation. “He saw her die.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Would he have washed his hands in the snow if he had been in ignorance
of the occurrence? He was the real, if not active, cause of her death
and he knew it. Either he--Excuse me, Dr. Heath and Mr. Gryce, it is not
for me to obtrude my opinion.”
“Have you settled it beyond dispute that Brotherson is really the man
who was seen doing this?”
“No, sir. I have not had a minute for that job, but I’m ready for the
business any time you see fit to spare me.”
“Let it be to-morrow, or, if you can manage it, to-night. We want the
man even if he is not the hero of that romantic episode. He wrote these
letters, and he must explain the last one. His initials, as you see,
are not ordinary ones, and you will find them at the bottom of all these
sheets. He was brave enough or arrogant enough to sign the questionable
one with his full name. This may speak well for him, and it may not. It
is for you to decide that. Where will you look for him, Sweetwater? No
one here knows his address.”
“Not Miss Challoner’s maid?”
“No; the name is a new one to her. But she made it very evident that she
was not surprised to hear that her mistress was in secret correspondence
with a member of the male sex. Much can be hidden from servants, but not
that.”
“I’ll find the man; I have a double reason for doing that now; he shall
not escape me.”
Dr. Heath expressed his satisfaction, and gave some orders. Meanwhile,
Mr. Gryce had not uttered a word.
VIII. STRANGE DOINGS FOR GEORGE
That evening George sat so long over the newspapers that in spite of my
absorbing interest in the topic engrossing me, I fell asleep in my cozy
little rocking chair. I was awakened by what seemed like a kiss falling
very softly on my forehead, though, to be sure, it may have been only
the flap of George’s coat sleeve as he stooped over me.
“Wake up, little woman,” I heard, “and trot away to bed. I’m going out
and may not be in till daybreak.”
“You! going out! at ten o’clock at night, tired as you are--as we both
are! What has happened--Oh!”
This broken exclamation escaped me as I perceived in the dim background
by the sitting-room door, the figure of a man who called up recent, but
very thrilling experiences.
“Mr. Sweetwater,” explained George. “We are going out together. It is
necessary, or you may be sure I should not leave you.”
I was quite wide awake enough by now to understand. “Oh, I know. You are
going to hunt up the man. How I wish--”
But George did not wait for me to express my wishes. He gave me a little
good advice as to how I had better employ my time in his absence, and
was off before I could find words to answer.
This ends all I have to say about myself; but the events of that
night carefully related to me by George are important enough for me to
describe them, with all the detail which is their rightful due. I shall
tell the story as I have already been led to do in other portions of
this narrative, as though I were present and shared the adventure.
As soon as the two were in the street, the detective turned towards
George and said:
“Mr. Anderson, I have a great deal to ask of you. The business before us
is not a simple one, and I fear that I shall have to subject you to more
inconvenience than is customary in matters like this. Mr. Brotherson has
vanished; that is, in his own proper person, but I have an idea that
I am on the track of one who will lead us very directly to him if we
manage the affair carefully. What I want of you, of course, is mere
identification. You saw the face of the man who washed his hands in the
snow, and would know it again, you say. Do you think you could be quite
sure of yourself, if the man were differently dressed and differently
occupied?”
“I think so. There’s his height and a certain strong look in his face. I
cannot describe it.”
“You don’t need to. Come! we’re all right. You don’t mind making a night
of it?”
“Not if it is necessary.”
“That we can’t tell yet.” And with a characteristic shrug and smile, the
detective led the way to a taxicab which stood in waiting at the corner.
A quarter of an hour of rather fast riding brought them into a tangle of
streets on the East side. As George noticed the swarming sidewalks and
listened to the noises incident to an over-populated quarter, he could
not forbear, despite the injunction he had received, to express his
surprise at the direction of their search.
“Surely,” said he, “the gentleman I have described can have no friends
here.” Then, bethinking himself, he added: “But if he has reasons to
fear the law, naturally he would seek to lose himself in a place as
different as possible from his usual haunts.”
“Yes, that would be some men’s way,” was the curt, almost indifferent,
answer he received. Sweetwater was looking this way and that from the
window beside him, and now, leaning out gave some directions to the
driver which altered their course.
When they stopped, which was in a few minutes, he said to George:
“We shall have to walk now for a block or two. I’m anxious to attract
no attention, nor is it desirable for you to do so. If you can manage
to act as if you were accustomed to the place and just leave all the
talking to me, we ought to get along first-rate. Don’t be astonished at
anything you see, and trust me for the rest; that’s all.”
They alighted, and he dismissed the taxicab. Some clock in the
neighbourhood struck the hour of ten. “Good! we shall be in time,”
muttered the detective, and led the way down the street and round a
corner or so, till they came to a block darker than the rest, and much
less noisy.
It had a sinister look, and George, who is brave enough under all
ordinary circumstances, was glad that his companion wore a badge and
carried a whistle. He was also relieved when he caught sight of the
burly form of a policeman in the shadow of one of the doorways. Yet the
houses he saw before him were not so very different from those they had
already passed. His uneasiness could not have sprung from them. They
had even an air of positive respectability, as though inhabited
by industrious workmen. Then, what was it which made the close
companionship of a member of the police so uncommonly welcome? Was it a
certain aspect of solitariness which clung to the block, or was it the
sudden appearance here and there of strangely gliding figures, which no
sooner loomed up against the snowy perspective, than they disappeared
again in some unseen doorway?
“There’s a meeting on to-night, of the Associated Brotherhood of the
Awl, the Plane and the Trowel (whatever that means), and it is the
speaker we want to see; the man who is to address them promptly at ten
o’clock. Do you object to meetings?”
“Is this a secret one?”
“It wasn’t advertised.”
“Are we carpenters or masons that we can count on admittance?”
“I am a carpenter. Don’t you think you can be a mason for the occasion?”
“I doubt it, but--”
“Hush! I must speak to this man.”
George stood back, and a few words passed between Sweetwater and a
shadowy figure which seemed to have sprung up out of the sidewalk.
“Balked at the outset,” were the encouraging words with which the
detective rejoined George. “It seems that a pass-word is necessary,
and my friend has been unable to get it. Will the speaker pass out this
way?” he inquired of the shadowy figure still lingering in their rear.
“He didn’t go in by it; yet I believe he’s safe enough inside,” was the
muttered answer.
Sweetwater had no relish for disappointments of this character, but it
was not long before he straightened up and allowed himself to exchange
a few more words with this mysterious person. These appeared to be of
a more encouraging nature than the last, for it was not long before the
detective returned with renewed alacrity to George, and, wheeling him
about, began to retrace his steps to the corner.
“Are we going back? Are you going to give up the job?” George asked.
“No; we’re going to take him from the rear. There’s a break in the
fence--Oh, we’ll do very well. Trust me.”
George laughed. He was growing excited, but not altogether agreeably
so. He says that he has seen moments of more pleasant anticipation.
Evidently, my good husband is not cut out for detective work.
Where they went under this officer’s guidance, he cannot tell. The
tortuous tangle of alleys through which he now felt himself led was dark
as the nether regions to his unaccustomed eyes. There was snow under
his feet and now and then he brushed against some obtruding object, or
stumbled against a low fence; but beyond these slight miscalculations on
his own part, he was a mere automaton in the hands of his eager guide,
and only became his own man again when they suddenly stepped into an
open yard and he could discern plainly before him the dark walls of a
building pointed out by Sweetwater as their probable destination. Yet
even here they encountered some impediment which prohibited a close
approach. A wall or shed cut off their view of the building’s lower
storey; and though somewhat startled at being left unceremoniously
alone after just a whispered word of encouragement from the ever ready
detective, George could quite understand the necessity which that person
must feel for a quiet reconnoitering of the surroundings before the
two of them ventured further forward in their possibly hazardous
undertaking. Yet the experience was none too pleasing to George, and he
was very glad to hear Sweetwater’s whisper again at his ear, and to
feel himself rescued from the pool of slush in which he had been left to
stand.
“The approach is not all that can be desired,” remarked the detective as
they entered what appeared to be a low shed. “The broken board has
been put back and securely nailed in place, and if I am not very much
mistaken there is a fellow stationed in the yard who will want the
pass-word too. Looks shady to me. I’ll have something to tell the chief
when I get back.”
“But we! What are we going to do if we cannot get in front or rear?”
“We’re going to wait right here in the hopes of catching a glimpse of
our man as he comes out,” returned the detective, drawing George towards
a low window overlooking the yard he had described as sentinelled. “He
will have to pass directly under this window on his way to the alley,”
Sweetwater went on to explain, “and if I can only raise it--but the
noise would give us away. I can’t do that.”
“Perhaps it swings on hinges,” suggested George. “It looks like that
sort of a window.”
“If it should--well! it does. We’re in great luck, sir. But before I
pull it open, remember that from the moment I unlatch it, everything
said or done here can be heard in the adjoining yard. So no whispers and
no unnecessary movements. When you hear him coming, as sooner or later
you certainly will, fall carefully to your knees and lean out just far
enough to catch a glimpse of him before he steps down from the porch. If
he stops to light his cigar or to pass a few words with some of the men
he will leave behind, you may get a plain enough view of his face or
figure to identify him. The light is burning low in that rear hall, but
it will do. If it does not,--if you can’t see him or if you do, don’t
hang out of the window more than a second. Duck after your first look.
I don’t want to be caught at this job with no better opportunity for
escape than we have here. Can you remember all that?”
George pinched his arm encouragingly, and Sweetwater, with an amused
grunt, softly unlatched the window and pulled it wide open.
A fine sleet flew in, imperceptible save for the sensation of damp it
gave, and the slight haze it diffused through the air. Enlarged by this
haze, the building they were set to watch rose in magnified proportions
at their left. The yard between, piled high in the centre with
snow-heaps or other heaps covered with snow, could not have been more
than forty feet square. The window from which they peered, was half-way
down this yard, so that a comparatively short distance separated them
from the porch where George had been told to look for the man he was
expected to identify. All was dark there at present, but he could hear
from time to time some sounds of restless movement, as the guard posted
inside shifted in his narrow quarters, or struck his benumbed feet
softly together.
But what came to them from above was more interesting than anything to
be heard or seen below. A man’s voice, raised to a wonderful pitch by
the passion of oratory, had burst the barriers of the closed hall in
that towering third storey and was carrying its tale to other ears than
those within. Had it been summer and the windows open, both George and
Sweetwater might have heard every word; for the tones were exceptionally
rich and penetrating, and the speaker intent only on the impression he
was endeavouring to make upon his audience. That he had not mistaken his
power in this direction was evinced by the applause which rose from
time to time from innumerable hands and feet. But this uproar would
be speedily silenced, and the mellow voice ring out again, clear and
commanding. What could the subject be to rouse such enthusiasm in the
Associated Brotherhood of the Awl, the Plane and the Trowel? There was a
moment when our listening friends expected to be enlightened. A shutter
was thrown back in one of those upper windows, and the window hurriedly
raised, during which words took the place of sounds and they heard
enough to whet their appetite for more. But only that. The shutter
was speedily restored to place, and the window again closed. A wise
precaution, or so thought George if they wished to keep their doubtful
proceedings secret.
A tirade against the rich and a loud call to battle could be gleaned
from the few sentences they had heard. But its virulence and pointed
attack was not that of the second-rate demagogue or business agent, but
of a man whose intellect and culture rang in every tone, and informed
each sentence.
Sweetwater, in whom satisfaction was fast taking the place of impatience
and regret, pushed the window to before asking George this question:
“Did you hear the voice of the man whose action attracted, your
attention outside the Clermont?”
“No.”
“Did you note just now the large shadow dancing on the ceiling over the
speaker’s head?”
“Yes, but I could judge nothing from that.”
“Well, he’s a rum one. I shan’t open this window again till he gives
signs of reaching the end of his speech. It’s too cold.”
But almost immediately he gave a start and, pressing George’s arm,
appeared to listen, not to the speech which was no longer audible, but
to something much nearer--a step or movement in the adjoining yard.
At least, so George interpreted the quick turn which this impetuous
detective made, and the pains he took to direct George’s attention to
the walk running under the window beneath which they crouched. Someone
was stealing down upon the house at their left, from the alley beyond.
A big man, whose shoulder brushed the window as he went by. George felt
his hand seized again and pressed as this happened, and before he had
recovered from this excitement, experienced another quick pressure and
still another as one, two, three additional figures went slipping by.
Then his hand was suddenly dropped, for a cry had shot up from the door
where the sentinel stood guard, followed by a sudden loud slam, and the
noise of a shooting bolt, which, proclaiming as it did that the invaders
were not friends but enemies to the cause which was being vaunted above,
so excited Sweetwater that he pulled the window wide open and took a
bold look out. George followed his example and this was what they saw:
Three men were standing flat against the fence leading from the shed
directly to the porch. The fourth was crouching within the latter, and
in another moment they heard his fist descend upon the door inside in a
way to rouse the echoes. Meantime, the voice in the audience hall above
had ceased, and there could be heard instead the scramble of hurrying
feet and the noise of overturning benches. Then a window flew up and a
voice called down:
“Who’s that? What do you want down there?”
But before an answer could be shouted back, this man was drawn
fiercely inside, and the scramble was renewed, amid which George heard
Sweetwater’s whisper at his ear:
“It’s the police. The chief has got ahead of me. Was that the man we’re
after--the one who shouted down?”
“No. Neither was he the speaker. The voices are very different.”
“We want the speaker. If the boys get him, we’re all right; but if they
don’t--wait, I must make the matter sure.”
And with a bound he vaulted through the window, whistling in a peculiar
way. George, thus left quite alone, had the pleasure of seeing his sole
protector mix with the boys, as he called them, and ultimately crowd
in with them through the door which had finally been opened for their
admittance. Then came a wait, and then the quiet re-appearance of the
detective alone and in no very, amiable mood.
“Well?” inquired George, somewhat breathlessly. “Do you want me? They
don’t seem to be coming out.”
“No; they’ve gone the other way. It was a red hot anarchist meeting,
and no mistake. They have arrested one of the speakers, but the other
escaped. How, we have not yet found out; but I think there’s a way out
somewhere by which he got the start of us. He was the man I wanted you
to see. Bad luck, Mr. Anderson, but I’m not at the end of my resources.
If you’ll have patience with me and accompany me a little further, I
promise you that I’ll only risk one more failure. Will you be so good,
sir?”
IX. THE INCIDENT OF THE PARTLY LIFTED SHADE
The fellow had a way with him, hard to resist. Cold as George was
and exhausted by an excitement of a kind to which he was wholly
unaccustomed, he found himself acceding to the detective’s request; and
after a quick lunch and a huge cup of coffee in a restaurant which I
wish I had time to describe, the two took a car which eventually brought
them into one of the oldest quarters of the Borough of Brooklyn. The
sleet which had stung their faces in the streets of New York had been
left behind them somewhere on the bridge, but the chill was not gone
from the air, and George felt greatly relieved when Sweetwater paused
in the middle of a long block before a lofty tenement house of mean
appearance, and signified that here they were to stop, and that from now
on, mum was to be their watchword.
George was relieved I say, but he was also more astonished than ever.
What kind of haunts were these for the cultured gentleman who spent
his evenings at the Clermont? It was easy enough in these days of
extravagant sympathies, to understand such a man addressing the uneasy
spirits of lower New York--he had been called an enthusiast, and an
enthusiast is very often a social agitator--but to trace him afterwards
to a place like this was certainly a surprise. A tenement--such a
tenement as this--meant home--home for himself or for those he counted
his friends, and such a supposition seemed inconceivable to my poor
husband, with the memory of the gorgeous parlour of the Clermont in
his mind. Indeed, he hinted something of the kind to his affable but
strangely reticent companion, but all the answer he got was a peculiar
smile whose humorous twist he could barely discern in the semi-darkness
of the open doorway into which they had just plunged.
“An adventure! certainly an adventure!” flashed through poor George’s
mind, as he peered, in great curiosity down the long hall before him,
into a dismal rear, opening into a still more dismal court. It was truly
a novel experience for a business man whose philanthropy was carried
on entirely by proxy--that is, by his wife. Should he be expected to
penetrate into those dark, ill-smelling recesses, or would he be led up
the long flights of naked stairs, so feebly illuminated that they gave
the impression of extending indefinitely into dimmer and dimmer heights
of decay and desolation?
Sweetwater seemed to decide for the rear, for leaving George, he stepped
down the hall into the court beyond, where George could see him casting
inquiring glances up at the walls above him. Another tenement, similar
to the one whose rear end he was contemplating, towered behind but he
paid no attention to that. He was satisfied with the look he had given
and came quickly back, joining George at the foot of the staircase, up
which he silently led the way.
It was a rude, none-too-well-cared-for building, but it seemed
respectable enough and very quiet, considering the mass of people it
accommodated. There were marks of poverty everywhere, but no squalor.
One flight--two flights--three--and then George’s guide stopped, and,
looking back at him, made a gesture. It appeared to be one of caution,
but when the two came together at the top of the staircase, Sweetwater
spoke quite naturally as he pointed out a door in their rear:
“That’s the room. We’ll keep a sharp watch and when any man, no matter
what his dress or appearance comes up these stairs and turns that way,
give him a sharp look. You understand?”
“Yes; but-”
“Oh, he hasn’t come in yet. I took pains to find that out. You saw me go
into the court and look up. That was to see if his window was lighted.
Well, it wasn’t.”
George felt non-plussed.
“But surely,” said he, “the gentleman named Brotherson doesn’t live
here.”
“The inventor does.”
“Oh!”
“And--but I will explain later.”
The suppressed excitement contained in these words made George stare.
Indeed, he had been wondering for some time at the manner of the
detective which showed a curious mixture of several opposing emotions.
Now, the fellow was actually in a tremble of hope or impatience;--and,
not content with listening, he peered every few minutes down the well of
the staircase, and when he was not doing that, tramped from end to end
of the narrow passage-way separating the head of the stairs from the
door he had pointed out, like one to whom minutes were hours. All this
time he seemed to forget George who certainly had as much reason as
himself for finding the time long. But when, after some half hour of
this tedium and suspense, there rose from below the faint clatter of
ascending footsteps, he remembered his meek companion and beckoning
him to one side, began a studied conversation with him, showing him a
note-book in which he had written such phrases as these:
Don’t look up till he is fairly in range with the light.
There’s nothing to fear; he doesn’t know either of us.
If it is a face you have seen before;--if it is the one we are expecting
to see, pull your necktie straight. It’s a little on one side.
These rather startling injunctions were read by George, with no very
perceptible diminution of the uneasiness which it was only natural for
him to feel at the oddity of his position. But only the demand last made
produced any impression on him. The man they were waiting for was no
further up than the second floor, but instinctively George’s hand
had flown to his necktie, and he was only stopped from its premature
re-arrangement by a warning look from Sweetwater.
“Not unless you know him,” whispered the detective; and immediately
launched out into an easy talk about some totally different business
which George neither understood, nor was expected to, I dare say.
Suddenly the steps below paused, and George heard Sweetwater draw in his
breath in irrepressible dismay. But they were immediately resumed, and
presently the head and shoulders of a workingman of uncommon proportions
appeared in sight on the stairway.
George cast him a keen look, and his hand rose doubtfully to his
neck and then fell back again. The approaching man was tall, very
well-proportioned and easy of carriage; but the face--such of it as
could be seen between his cap and the high collar he had pulled up about
his ears, conveyed no exact impression to George’s mind, and he did not
dare to give the signal Sweetwater expected from him. Yet as the man
went by with a dark and sidelong glance at them both, he felt his hand
rise again, though he did not complete the action, much to his own
disgust and to the evident disappointment of the watchful detective.
“You’re not sure?” he now heard, oddly interpolated in the stream of
half-whispered talk with which the other endeavoured to carry off the
situation.
George shook his head. He could not rid himself of the old impression he
had formed of the man in the snow.
“Mr. Dunn, a word with you,” suddenly spoke up Sweetwater, to the man
who had just passed them. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is my name,” was the quiet response, in a voice which was
at once rich and resonant; a voice which George knew--the voice of the
impassioned speaker he had heard resounding through the sleet as he
cowered within hearing in the shed behind the Avenue A tenement. “Who
are you who wish to speak to me at so late an hour?”
He was returning to them from the door he had unlocked and left slightly
ajar.
“Well, we are--You know what,” smiled the ready detective, advancing
half-way to greet him. “We’re not members of the Associated Brotherhood,
but possibly have hopes of being so. At all events, we should like to
talk the matter over, if, as you say, it’s not too late.”
“I have nothing to do with the club--”
“But you spoke before it.”
“Yes.”
“Then you can give us some sort of an idea how we are to apply for
membership.”
Mr. Dunn met the concentrated gaze of his two evidently unwelcome
visitors with a frankness which dashed George’s confidence in himself,
but made little visible impression upon his daring companion.
“I should rather see you at another time,” said he. “But--” his
hesitation was inappreciable save to the nicest ear--“if you will allow
me to be brief, I will tell you what I know--which is very little.”
Sweetwater was greatly taken aback. All he had looked for, as he
was careful to tell my husband later, was a sufficiently prolonged
conversation to enable George to mark and study the workings of the face
he was not yet sure of. Nor did the detective feel quite easy at the
readiness of his reception; nor any too well pleased to accept the
invitation which this man now gave them to enter his room.
But he suffered no betrayal of his misgivings to escape him, though he
was careful to intimate to George, as they waited in the doorway for the
other to light up, that he should not be displeased at his refusal to
accompany him further in this adventure, and even advised him to remain
in the hall till he received his summons to enter.
But George had not come as far as this to back out now, and as soon
as he saw Sweetwater advance into the now well-lighted interior, he
advanced too and began to look around him.
The room, like many others in these old-fashioned tenements, had a jog
just where the door was, so that on entering they had to take several
steps before they could get a full glimpse of its four walls. When they
did, both showed surprise. Comfort, if not elegance, confronted them,
which impression, however, was immediately lost in the evidences of
work, manual, as well as intellectual, which were everywhere scattered
about.
The man who lived here was not only a student, as was evinced by a long
wall full of books, but he was an art-lover, a musician, an inventor and
an athlete.
So much could be learned from the most cursory glance. A more careful
one picked up other facts fully as startling and impressive. The books
were choice; the invention to all appearance a practical one; the art of
a high order and the music, such as was in view, of a character of
which the nicest taste need not be ashamed. George began to feel quite
conscious of the intrusion of which they had been guilty, and was amazed
at the ease with which the detective carried himself in the presence
of such manifestations of culture and good, hard work. He was trying to
recall the exact appearance of the figure he had seen stooping in the
snowy street two nights before, when he found himself staring at the
occupant of the room, who had taken up his stand before them and was
regarding them while they were regarding the room.
He had thrown aside his hat and rid himself of his overcoat, and the
fearlessness of his aspect seemed to daunt the hitherto dauntless
Sweetwater, who, for the first time in his life, perhaps, hunted in vain
for words with which to start conversation.
Had he made an awful mistake? Was this Mr. Dunn what he seemed an
unknown and careful genius, battling with great odds in his honest
struggle to give the world something of value in return for what it
had given him? The quick, almost deprecatory glance he darted at
George betrayed his dismay; a dismay which George had begun to share,
notwithstanding his growing belief that the man’s face was not wholly
unknown to him even if he could not recognise it as the one he had seen
outside the Clermont.
“You seem to have forgotten your errand,” came in quiet, if not
good-natured, sarcasm from their patiently waiting host.
“It’s the room,” muttered Sweetwater, with an attempt at his old-time
ease which was not as fully successful as usual. “What an all-fired
genius you must be. I never saw the like. And in a tenement house too!
You ought to be in one of those big new studio buildings in New York
where artists be and everything you see is beautiful. You’d appreciate
it, you would.”
The detective started, George started, at the gleam which answered him
from a very uncommon eye. It was a temporary flash, however, and quickly
veiled, and the tone in which this Dunn now spoke was anything but an
encouraging one.
“I thought you were desirous of joining a socialistic fraternity,” said
he; “a true aspirant for such honours don’t care for beautiful things
unless all can have them. I prefer my tenement. How is it with you,
friends?”
Sweetwater found some sort of a reply, though the thing which this man
now did must have startled him, as it certainly did George. They were so
grouped that a table quite full of anomalous objects stood at the
back of their host, and consequently quite beyond their own reach. As
Sweetwater began to speak, he whom he had addressed by the name of Dunn,
drew a pistol from his breast pocket and laid it down barrel towards
them on this table top. Then he looked up courteously enough, and
listened till Sweetwater was done. A very handsome man, but one not to
be trifled with in the slightest degree. Both recognised this fact, and
George, for one, began to edge towards the door.
“Now I feel easier,” remarked the giant, swelling out his chest. He was
unusually tall, as well as unusually muscular. “I never like to carry
arms; but sometimes it is unavoidable. Damn it, what hands!” He was
looking at his own, which certainly showed soil. “Will you pardon me?”
he pleasantly apologised, stepping towards a washstand and plunging his
hands into the basin. “I cannot think with dirt on me like that. Humph,
hey! did you speak?”
He turned quickly on George who had certainly uttered an ejaculation,
but receiving no reply, went on with his task, completing it with a care
and a disregard of their presence which showed him up in still another
light.
But even his hardihood showed shock, when, upon turning round with a
brisk, “Now I’m ready to talk,” he encountered again the clear eye of
Sweetwater. For, in the person of this none too welcome intruder, he saw
a very different man from the one upon whom he had just turned his back
with so little ceremony; and there appeared to be no good reason for the
change. He had not noted in his preoccupation, how George, at sight of
his stooping figure, had made a sudden significant movement, and if he
had, the pulling of a necktie straight, would have meant nothing to him.
But to Sweetwater it meant every thing, and it was in the tone of one
fully at ease with himself that he now dryly remarked: “Mr. Brotherson,
if you feel quite clean; and if you have sufficiently warmed yourself,
I would suggest that we start out at once, unless you prefer to have me
share this room with you till the morning.”
There was silence. Mr. Dunn thus addressed attempted no answer; not for
a full minute. The two men were measuring each other--George felt that
he did not count at all--and they were quite too much occupied with
this task to heed the passage of time. To George, who knew little, if
anything, of what this silent struggle meant to either, it seemed that
the detective stood no show before this Samson of physical strength and
intellectual power, backed by a pistol just within reach of his hand.
But as George continued to look and saw the figure of the smaller man
gradually dilate, while that of the larger, the more potent and the
better guarded, gave unmistakable signs of secret wavering, he slowly
changed his mind and, ranging himself with the detective, waited for
the word or words which should explain this situation and render
intelligible the triumph gradually becoming visible in the young
detective’s eyes.
But he was not destined to have his curiosity satisfied so far. He might
witness and hear, but it was long before he understood.
“Brotherson?” repeated their host, after the silence had lasted to the
breaking-point. “Why do you call me that?”
“Because it is your name.”
“You called me Dunn a minute ago.”
“That is true.”
“Why Dunn if Brotherson is my name?”
“Because you spoke under the name of Dunn at the meeting to-night, and
if I don’t mistake, that is the name by which you are known here.”
“And you? By what name are you known?”
“It is late to ask, isn’t it? But I’m willing to speak it now, and
I might not have been so a little earlier in our conversation. I am
Detective Sweetwater of the New York Department of Police, and my errand
here is a very simple one. Some letters signed by you have been found
among the papers of the lady whose mysterious death at the hotel
Clermont is just now occupying the attention of the New York
authorities. If you have any information to give which will in any way
explain that death, your presence will be welcome at Coroner Heath’s
office in New York. If you have not, your presence will still be
welcome. At all events, I was told to bring you. You will be on hand
to accompany me in the morning, I am quite sure, pardoning the
unconventional means I have taken to make sure of my man?”
The humour with which this was said seemed to rob it of anything like
attack, and Mr. Brotherson, as we shall hereafter call him, smiled with
an odd acceptance of the same, as he responded:
“I will go before the police certainly. I haven’t much to tell, but what
I have is at their service. It will not help you, but I have no secrets.
What are you doing?”
He bounded towards Sweetwater, who had simply stepped to the window,
lifted the shade and looked across at the opposing tenement.
“I wanted to see if it was still snowing,” explained the detective,
with a smile, which seemed to strike the other like a blow. “If it was a
liberty, please pardon it.”
Mr. Brotherson drew back. The cold air of self-possession which he now
assumed, presented such a contrast to the unwarranted heat of the
moment before that George wondered greatly over it, and later, when he
recapitulated to me the whole story of this night, it was this incident
of the lifted shade, together with the emotion it had caused, which he
acknowledged as being for him the most inexplicable event of the evening
and the one he was most anxious to hear explained.
As this ends our connection with this affair, I will bid you my personal
farewell. I have often wished that circumstances had made it possible
for me to accompany you through the remaining intricacies of this
remarkable case.
But you will not lack a suitable guide.